Barely five minutes after the men in the squadroom finish trying to fathom what is happening to them, the lieutenant takes a phone call from the Chief of Detectives. The Chief of Ds tells Franklin, amongst other things, that even though the death occurred within the confines of the Eleventh Precinct, the Alvarez case now officially belongs to the Eighth, being as it seems to have a solid link to the Parlatti case, which was already theirs. In his turn, Franklin relays the word from above to the squad, and it’s all systems go.
Doyle makes it his first task to learn what he can about the events of last night. It’s a job that takes longer than he hoped, mainly because the required information seems to be distributed across about a dozen people from the Eleventh Precinct, the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force and the Bomb Squad, not all of whom are immediately contactable.
Next, Doyle calls the Medical Examiner’s office for a prelim on the Alvarez and Cavell autopsies. He manages to speak to Norman Chin, who informs him that Alvarez’s fatal injuries were sustained solely as a result of a massive explosion, the epicenter of which lay in the immediate proximity of one Tremaine Cavell. It is Chin’s conjecture that the bomb was either being held by Cavell, or was somehow attached to his upper torso, this being difficult to confirm owing to the current absence of said upper torso.
The conclusion being, Doyle thinks as he ends the call, that Cavell had somehow been turned into a human bomb. So, strike the notion that Cavell had any hot information to reveal. He was being used, just as Scarlett had been used to kill Joe.
Tired of having a phone clamped to his ear, Doyle abandons his desk and heads out to the apartment of Cavell’s girl on West Seventeenth. There he speaks with the building superintendent, whose primary concern seems to be that his warning about making holes in his walls was ignored, his building now possessing one very large hole where a third-floor window used to be, thank you very much.
There is only a handful of tenants in the building when Doyle is there. Others are out at work; some have evacuated and are refusing to return until they are 100 per cent certain they are not likely to have their asses blown off. From those remaining, Doyle extracts nothing in the way of a lead.
His next visit is a return one to the Pit Stop. He finds a few of Cavell’s buddies there; others require further legwork. To each of them he puts the same questions: Do you know where Tremaine went last night? Do you know who he met with?
These boys are incensed. They want revenge. They will do whatever they can to track down the motherfucker who smoked TC. But as far as how to carry out that mission goes, it’s clear to Doyle that they don’t have a clue where to start.
With time ticking away, hour after fruitless hour, Doyle begins to fear that there are no clues to be found. The killer is that good. So good, in fact, that if the police are to have any hope of catching him, the perp may have to lend them a hand.
He may have to continue his killing spree.
The clothes hang loosely on the man’s thin frame. The battered corduroy coat looks ready to slip off his narrow shoulders, and his wrinkled beige pants billow around his bony legs. He walks with his head tilted to one side, like he’s trying to keep ear drops in place. His left arm does not beat time to his walking pace, but instead dangles and bounces off his side as though it’s a length of rubber.
Doyle takes another bite from his beef sandwich and watches through his car windshield as the man pushes through a doorway farther up the block here on East Eleventh Street. He waits five minutes, finishing his sandwich and coffee before stepping out of his car and heading toward the building the man has just entered.
He swings open the heavy front door, forcing it back against powerful springs that slam it shut when he lets it slip from his grasp. He is in a small, musty lobby containing a noticeboard, a desk and a single unoccupied chair. He pushes through the next set of double doors and enters a dimly lit corridor. There’s a smell of sweat here. From Doyle’s right comes the hissing of a shower at full blast; from his left, the unmistakable pounding of gloved fists, the shuffling of feet, and the yells of men who live for the controlled release of aggression.
Doyle heads left, breathes deeply of the testosterone-filled atmosphere. The ever-present bounce in his step becomes more pronounced now, until his gait is more of a swagger. He remembers how it felt to be on the edge of threading a path through the supporters and the detractors, the cheers and the catcalls, his sole intent to knock the living daylights out of another man.
He enters a large hall. On the far side, a man in a sleeveless white T-shirt and sweat pants takes powerful swings at a punchbag, while another huge man studies his technique with a critical eye. The center of the gym is taken up by a boxing ring. A white man and his black opponent, both of whom would be mean-looking enough even without their headgear and gumshields, dance around the canvas looking for openings. Dotted around the ring, other men watch and throw out words of advice and encouragement.
Seated on a wooden bench near the wall, still wearing his coat, is the man Doyle has followed. A bag of potato chips is on his lap, and he brings handfuls of them to his mouth with his one good arm. His eyes do not shift from the sparring fighters as Doyle makes his way over and sits next to him on the bench.
They sit there like this for several minutes: not saying anything to each other, just watching the boxers, assessing the skill, the art, of the men corralled together in that small roped-off square.
Finally, Doyle says, ‘My money’s on the white dude.’
The man next to him brings another mound of chips to his mouth, munches on them thoughtfully.
‘I coulda taken him,’ he says in all seriousness.
Doyle’s eyes slide to his neighbor. Yeah, he thinks, you could. Back in the day.
As an eight-year-old kid fresh over from Ireland, Doyle had it tough growing up in the South Bronx. It might not have been so bad had his father migrated his family into one of the few remaining Irish communities in the borough. For some reason unknown to Doyle, he chose instead to bring them to an area inhabited predominantly by blacks and Hispanics. Of the white minority in Doyle’s neighborhood, few could lay claim to any Irish ancestry, and even then it was an Irishness distanced from them by several generations. The problem for Doyle was that he
Tired of trying to keep her young son out of trouble, Doyle’s mother decided that if he was going to fight anyway, then he might as well learn how to do it properly. Her solution was to sign him up in the nearest boxing gym.
Doyle learned a lot in that gym. Not just about how to defend himself, which he did with great success, but also about life itself. It was here that Doyle was coached by a black ex-cop named Herbie Chase. As a boxer, Doyle was above average in ability but never top class, and it was Chase’s fascinating stories of life on the streets that eventually convinced Doyle to apply for the Police Academy. But there were others in that gym who showed a lot more boxing promise.
Like Mickey ‘Spinner’ Spinoza, for example — the man now seated next to Doyle.
Right into his teens, Doyle looked up to Spinner as a role model. The guy was five years older and not as bulky as Doyle — he was a lightweight, in fact — but back then he had a perfectly sculpted physique. And his technique — boy, was that something to behold. That guy could
And then life played one of its cruel jokes. As blows go, it looked nothing. A jab to the side of the head that Spinner shouldn’t have even noticed. But he dropped as though his legs had just disappeared. Just lay there, drooling and twitching.
They diagnosed a brain hemorrhage. It had probably been waiting to pop in his head for months, maybe even years. When it did, its effect was like being hit by an express train.
Spinner recovered eventually. But not fully. He pretty much lost all use of his left arm, and the left side of his face would always droop lower than the right, but at least he had his life back, right?
Wrong.
Spinner’s life was in that gym. Was in the ring. Boxing was what kept him off the streets. When he was told he would never box again, Spinner did what many other of his South Bronx compatriots had done: he slipped into the murky world of drugs and crime.
Doyle lost contact with him. As the years passed, Spinner became a fading memory of unachieved greatness. Then, six months ago, he showed up at Doyle’s precinct station house in the East Village. Desperate for money to feed his drug habit, he offered the only thing he now possessed: knowledge. From that point on, Spinner
